The term hosiery is used herein to generically denote all types of clothing articles intended for wear on feet and legs, such as socks, stockings and pantyhose. After hosiery has been formed into its general intended shape by knitting, weaving or other techniques, it typically undergoes furher processing on moveable forms which carry the hosiery through further processing operations. Once the further processing has been completed, the hosiery must be stripped from the forms and prepared for packaging.
In order to facilitate the storage, handling, inspecting and packaging of hosiery after it has been boarded it is important that the individual garment or garments be wrinkle-free and neatly stacked or folded. Some types of garments, particularly socks that have been accumulated and hung vertically after stripping from boarding forms hang neatly in a vertical side-by-side relationship without special handling. Pantyhose and stockings because of their length, their very light weight and the oft-times presence of static electricity or air movement, do not necessarily hang side-by-side in orderly fashion and may twist, wrinkle or tangle, thereby hindering subsequent handling operations and detracting from the appearance of the finished product.
Gang strippers have sometimes been used in order to suspend garments side-by-side in a space relationship to each other in order to try to overcome these problems. In a gang type stripper a large number of garments are suspended from an accumulator without being straightened by stroking. When groups of garments so suspended are folded from this position by squeezing the suspended garment with bars on either side of the group, the resulting stack is staggered and disarranged by the relative movement of the garments one against the other during the squeeze and fold operation making it difficult to handle the garments in subsequent operations.
The present invention was developed to handle hosiery in a manner which allows subsequent handling to be accomplished in a more efficient manner because the hosiery is transferred from the accumulator in a neatly arranged stack. When the garments have been collated prior to folding, the space between them will have been eliminated with the result that any ensuing fold will result in a neat and tidy stack. The neatness of this fold is further enhanced since before the folding operation the garments are stroked and flattened individually or successively against each other during the collating (accumulating) process.